


Upended

by Gimmemocha



Series: Ivrianna & the Cobalt Company [3]
Category: World of Warcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29797089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gimmemocha/pseuds/Gimmemocha
Series: Ivrianna & the Cobalt Company [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2184330
Kudos: 3





	Upended

Ivrianna hit the paving stones at the exact right angle to deprive her of the ability to speak for five whole seconds, which would've been a record except that she'd spent days not-talking to Daine. Sadly, it wasn't the first time that hour she'd hit the paving stones that hard and as she stared up at the Stormwind sky, she found it no longer panicked her not to be able to breathe.

She finally sucked in a long breath and rolled to her side, levering herself to her feet, daggers scraping the rocks. She glared at her opponent through strands of draggled black hair. "You could at least sweat, you know," she said.

Osborne pushed away from the wall he had been leaning against to wait. "Make me."

"I've been trying to. Is it me, or am I getting worse at this?"

Instead of answering, he attacked again. Ivri backpedaled instinctively, then made herself sidestep instead to give herself time to adjust without running out of space. _Or taking myself out of range of assistance, or finding myself in an area where I don't know the footi--_

This time when she went airborne, she managed to take it on her shoulder and roll away, coming to her feet with daggers at the ready.

"Better," Osbourne said. "Get a drink."

Ivri sighed and sheathed one dagger – one, because the last time she'd sheathed both he had attacked her again immediately – before picking up the leather bota and squirting a stream of water into her dry mouth.

"You're not getting worse and you know it," he said. "Distracting friends with disarming banter might help when you're fighting friends, but not when you're fighting orcs. Or Defias in a mine."

She looked away and slid the cap back into the mouth of her bota, giving it a tap to settle it firmly. Defias in a mine. Some day she would stop being alarmed at how much SI:7 knew. "Might work on the Defias," she said. "They are human, and humans are tediously predictable."

Her dagger flashed up and deflected his throw, earning her a bark of laughter. "Two more points," he said. "One for knowing the throw was incoming, one for not following up on the mine comment. Five minute break."

That meant it was safe enough to sheathe her weapon and start walking careful circles.

He watched her pace. "You're getting better, Ivri," he said. "The trick is training you without training you out of everything you learned on the streets. Those moves will give you an edge some day."

She just nodded, hands on her waist.

"All right," he said slowly, leaning back against his wall again. "So, not the practice that has your guts in knots."

Ivri glanced over at him. It took an effort to control her frown, but he was teaching her that, too. Mostly courtesy of late night gambling sessions that saw a portion of her income relocated into his pockets, but since it was training and not (entirely) recreation, he had been good enough to point out her tells and to help her keep from developing new ones. The ability to maintain a perfectly blank face was coming in handy at the moment. She didn't answer him.

"Gonna make me guess?"

"Don't need you to," she said. "I'm here for a trainer, Osborne, not a mother. I have one of those."

He nodded, thoughtful. "If it weren't affecting your work, I'd agree with you. But it is. So let's have it out."

"Not interested."

"Didn't ask if you were."

She spread her hands. "If it's affecting my work, fire me. I'm only too happy to walk away."

He snorted. "Try it, then."

"Don't do that," she said softly, eyes darkening with dangerous shadows. "Don't try to make me feel the leash, don't try to prove to me you're in charge, it will not end well."

He grinned, white teeth flashing against dark beard. "Ah, now we come to it. Someone jerking your chain, Barlowe?"

She blinked at him. "Fuck," she swore quietly. A twist in her pacing path took her to a nearby bench and she sat, actually sat.

Osborne didn't move to sit or stand near her. He just waited.

"Everything..." But that wasn't right, so she tried again. "Nothing's what I thought it was."

"Nothing?"

Ivri stared down at the stones, at her shadow across them. "I thought Elo was this staunch and stalwart leader. I thought he had all the answers and he'd always be there, but he's not going into the mines with us. He has this old injury, he's worried it'll slow him down when we all need to be at our best. He's tired. It's like he set up this tiny tea party and only suddenly the entire ruling family's shown up including the shade of Queen Tiffin herself and a court of five dragons. All he wanted was tea and cakes, but now he has a massive banquet to manage. He's doing his best, but he wishes it was all just tea and cakes again."

Osborne didn't interrupt, so she continued.

"And Niris," Ivri said, exhaling and leaning back, her head against the wall behind her. "I thought she was prim and proper, wisdom to offer and kindness from the top of her head to the bottoms of her dainty feet, but I saw a side of her that's one step from madness. Really, it's all just a veneer of civility. A thin skating of frost over a dark, deep pond."

Osborne grunted.

Ivri shook her head, strands of hair snagged by the stone. "Him? Don't even get me started on Atley. I thought he was like my father, my brothers. But he doesn't give a damn. I mean, he does, in an abstract sort of way. He doesn't want me to hate him. That's the extent of his ambition. Never came to apologize, never came to ask me what was wrong."

"You ever go to him?"

"Not the point," she said. "It's not about who's right or wrong. Well, all right, not after the first day. It's about what it means about who he is. Whatever we had, whatever I thought we had, to him it's just over now. A shrug and 'I don't want you to hate me'." She thought about that, staring up at the pennants overhead stirred to motion by a passing gryphon. "I thought he was like my family, but he's not. I'm not saying he's anything particularly terrible, just that he's not who I thought he was, either."

She had to laugh, just a little. "Do you know the funny bit of having everyone backwards from who I thought they were? The person I completely dismissed as this vain, silly little man has proven to be kind and gentle and always there for me. I mean I know if I asked Oranna or Jo for help, they'd be there, but I never had to ask Gerhold. He's just... there."

She leaned forward, forearms on her knees. "Even the company itself isn't what I thought it was. I thought it was this vibrant, daring enterprise. Unburdened by the structures of the military, more flexible, leaner, more adaptable. I thought we'd go where the army couldn't, do what soldiers didn't. But that's not what it is."

"You seem certain of that."

"I am! It's all connected, you see."

Skeptical brows flicked higher over his dark eyes. "Connect it for me, then."

Ivri wrapped a lock of hair around one finger, twisting it into a curl and letting it go again. "We were discussing the mission," she said. "I said something to... I dunno, Gerhold, I believe. Atley snapped at us to shut it. I made a very rude gesture. There were a few other exchanges of opinion. Before we separated for our assignments, I ripped a strip of hide off him, and we parted. That's where it began. And ended, I suppose.

"Elo didn't say anything to Atley for speaking to us like that, for trying to call us to order like a bunch of unruly footmen. Light, for issuing orders in the first place even though there's no 'rank' in the company! If it were anyone's place to do it, it should have beeen his, but he didn't say anything because he concurred with Atley, yet didn't want the argument. So he let Atley take the hit for him, because Elo is tired.

"Atley took the hit because he was a soldier, and he sees everything through a soldier's eye. He wants to be a soldier again so badly, he's run right over top of me and kept going, because that, being a soldier, is more important to him than anything. He'll keep doing it, too. Keep finding ways to increase his authority in the Company, no matter who he steps on to do it, whether he means to or not. Which is the opposite of my family.

"Niris is Elo's old friend, and she's five steps from cracking like an eggshell. Put her around a pile of orcs and her head will split open, letting Light knows what sort of demon into the world. She has no time or energy to put a stop to all this. She takes care of us, of course, because she's trying to bandage her own soul when she bandages us, but she's not Elo's partner, she's not a co-leader. She's just as damaged as the rest of us.

"It's not a home, Osborne. I don't know what it is any more."

His shadow fell over her. She had not, of course, heard him move. She lifted her eyes to him without raising her chin. "It's a company," he said, not entirely without sympathy. "You're a mercenary now, like it or not. It's not a family. It never was. If you're very lucky, you'll be friends with most of the mercs around you, but that's the best you can hope for. You want a home, girl, you should've kept the one you had."

It was rough advice, to hear and to take, and part of her wanted to rebel against it. But rebelling against the truth was futile. You could only accept it.

His hand landed heavily on her shoulder, a rough pat that made her waver slightly on the bench.

"So what do I do about it?" she asked, a near whisper.

"You work, Barlowe."

He backed away and pulled her to her feet, kept backing as she re-drew her weapons.

"Hey."

She blinked out of her thoughts and focused on his rough, dark face. 

"Growing up sucks. Everyone who's ever done it will tell you the same thing."

They stood across from each other in the courtyard of SI:7, daggers with sun-glittering edges drawn and ready. 

"Work, hmm?" she asked.

"Work."

Taking a breath, Ivrianna put it all aside. She had work to do.


End file.
